IRVING, Texas -- Dallas Cowboys cornerback Morris Claiborne will have season-ending surgery after tearing the patellar tendon in his left knee.
Coach Jason Garrett said Monday that Claiborne will have surgery in the next couple of days and be put on injured reserve.
Claiborne got hurt in Sunday night's 38-17 victory over the New Orleans Saints, when he was down on the field at the end of a play with about 6 minutes left in the first quarter. The sixth overall pick from the 2012 draft had to be helped off the field with people on both sides of him.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones immediately after the game expressed concerns about the severity of the injury, and further tests Monday confirmed that.
Bills bench Manuel,
Orton to start
ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. -- The Buffalo Bills have benched starting quarterback EJ Manuel.
Coach Doug Marrone announced Monday that Kyle Orton will start Sunday's game against the Detroit Lions.
Manuel was the Bills' first-round draft pick in 2013 and had started 14 games over the past two seasons.
Manuel had a season-low quarterback rating of 59.4 and threw an interception that was returned for a momentum-changing touchdown Sunday during the Bills' 23-17 loss to Houston.
Buffalo signed Orton on August 30 to back up Manuel. Orton, a nine-year NFL veteran, spent the past two seasons in Dallas before being cut by the Cowboys in mid-July after he skipped the team's offseason workouts amid reports that he was considering retirement.
Colts' Landry banned
4 games for PEDs
INDIANAPOLIS -- Colts safety LaRon Landry has been suspended four games without pay for violating the NFL's performance-enhancing substance policy.
Landry has started all four games for the Colts (2-2) and had 18 tackles.
He cannot return to the team until after Indy's Oct. 26 game against Pittsburgh.
The news came Monday on the same day reigning NFL sacks champ Robert Mathis was reinstated and then placed on the reserve/non-football injury list. Mathis also was suspended for violating the performance-enhancing substance policy. He will miss the rest of the season after tearing his Achilles tendon during private workouts in Atlanta.
Dwyer formally charged
with assaulting wife
PHOENIX -- Arizona Cardinals running back Jonathan Dwyer has been formally charged with assaulting his wife in two arguments in July at their Phoenix apartment.
An indictment publicly released late Friday charges Dwyer with felony aggravated assault and eight misdemeanors.
Investigators say Dwyer broke his wife's nose during a July 21 argument and engaged in a dispute the following day in which he punched his wife and threw a shoe at his 17-month-old son, who wasn't injured.
Dwyer had been booked on suspicion of assaulting his son, but the indictment doesn't charge him with crimes related to the child.
Prosecutors say it's not unusual for grand juries to return a slightly different charges than those initially brought in a case.
A message left for Dwyer attorney Jared Allen wasn't immediately returned Monday.
Autopsy shows Chiefs'
Belcher had brain damage
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- An autopsy performed a year after Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher killed his baby's mother and himself found the 25-year-old sustained the same kind of brain damage that has turned up in other NFL players.
Belcher fatally shot 22-year-old Kasandra Perkins on Dec. 1, 2012, in the couple's Kansas City home before driving to Arrowhead Stadium and killing himself in front of the team's general manager and head coach.
Belcher's mother, Cheryl Shepherd, sued the team, claiming the Chiefs failed to care for her son after he was subjected to repetitive head trauma.
The autopsy found signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease found in athletes and others with a history of repetitive brain injuries. Attorneys for Shepherd and other plaintiffs suing the team released the findings.
Sports on 09/30/2014